“There are contingency arrangements?”
“No. This is the optimum balance point and the most likely plan to succeed. Our hopes are on you.”
“But … you want me to take this chance of preventing the end of the universe in 300 billion years time. In all likelihood we won"t even exist by then. There won"t even be dust left from our civilisations. We don"t have the sort of perspective that you do. I"d happily take another 200 billion years and worry about the end of the cosmos then.”
“It would be too late. We have calculated all this out most carefully. We do not, of course, know who or what will be alive all that time hence. But whoever it is will surely not want their universe to end. They would not understand why we did not take this opportunity to give the universe immortality. You can
